Although I was not present for this week’s class I do have some thoughts I would like to share, first up is my pre-internship. During my pre-internship I learned a lot about how hard assessment really is. I think I succeeded in giving students a variety of assignments to show their learning (exit slips, role plays, research, visuals, and always leaving room for questions) but giving the actual grades was a lot more difficult. It was hard trying to identify “the line” between one grade and another and it’s hard assigning grades to those with different abilities; when you know someone is trying their hardest while another didn’t even try but both achieved similar results…it’s just hard. I tried to give feedback on all of their larger assignments and I learned through experience that going through the rubric with the students sets them up for success.

Next up is the Dialogue Paper results, the lowest score on my paper was an 82, while the highest was a 96. The average score was 86.11, which I think was about what I scored myself. The results were interesting to see and there was some really good examples of inter score reliability and some very poor examples of it as well, a couple received failing grades as well as some in the high 90s. I think it’s really interesting to see how different people view the same piece of work, obviously this cannot happen, but it would be cool to hear the two different perspectives on the same piece when their is such a large range in grades, like in the example above; what feedback would they give?

I also learned that there are five different lenses to consider in data reporting: criterion referenced (comparing students to curricular criteria and/or outcomes), standards referenced, self-referenced (how do they compare to other students this year?), norm-referenced (comparing students to others in the division), and longitudinal referenced (comparing students to those of the past). The most important type is how do they compare to the outcome, this focuses you more on the student and pinpoints areas you need to focus on. Another useful one would be pinpointing results to those in previous years because it may show you places where your teaching practice needs to adapt with the times and also that not every group of students learns the same.

My symbol for this week is a 100% as a reminder of my experience grading my students’ assignments. It took 100% of my brain power to try and give them accurate grades with good feedback so they could achieve that “100%” next time.